Tag Archive | mb star diagnosis

MB Star DAS SDS (STAR Diagnostic System) Tips and Tricks

Whats being used is MB STAR SDS ( STAR Diagnostic System ) C4

All i can say is this thing is AWESOME. imho a must buy for any modern mb owner.
so far I’ve changed the alarm chirp to netherlands, activated flashing brake
lights under heavy braking, and lowered the temp the fan comes on 10 degrees.

GO BUY ONE MB STAR SDS C4

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Following parts are what I did with SDS ( STAR Diagnostic System ):

Flash rear brake lights under panic braking:

Control units> Body> rear SAM> Control Unit Adaptations> Flashing Brake> Active

Chirp on lock/unlock

Control Units for multiple items>Body> Control Unit Adaptations> Security/Alarm> National ATA> Select Netherlands

Fan-on temp lower

Control Units> Drive> Engine> Control Unit Adaptations> Correction Programming> Suction Fan> Temp increase to max of 10 degrees C.

Lowering airmatic (ABC is more tricky from what I hear)

Control Units for Multiple items>Chassis>Suspension> Initial Start Up>Manual settings> use +/- to get the car to the height you want (keeping the voltage numbers in the specified range).

Hit F2 to get to the romess screen. Enter romess angles either from the tool or within the specified values on the previous page. If all ok, this should result in the car set at the right level.

Still working on tank level.

Changing the vmax requires developer mode. I have a tune so I don’t need to do this.

Heres one that MAY have a positive performance impact, or may not.

Control Units > Drive > Motor Electronics > F3 ( to clear the nag warning ) > Control unit adaptations > Correction Programming > Ignition

You get 4 choice of minimum octane rating ( probably get more if you can get Variant Coding to change from USA to Rest Of World or Euro )

Baseline ( 87?)

89

91

93

I suspect setting a higher octane rating will allow a bit more initial ignition advance.

Details on SDS ( STAR Diagnostic System ) cables and software:

Consists of a set of 5 cables, the 2 most used are the standard OBD II or the 38 pin “Mushroom head”. These plug into car and lead to a multiplexor box. There are 3-4 types of these with the 2 most prevalent being the C3 (RS232 connection to laptop serial port ) or the C4 ( Ethernet or wireless connection to laptop). Just now seeing what I suppose could be called a C5, a multiplexor with the diagnostic software embedded in it rather than a separate laptop. That would feed about any device you care to name. Details are sketchy at this time.

The software is MB proprietary and comes in 2 flavors, DAS ( forget the acronym meaning ) or Xentry Diagnostics ( can be thought of as DAS v 2.0). The choice between either of those is year and model dependent. Generally 2010’ish or newer models will use Xentry Diagnostics while DAS is about 1998’ish to 2010’ish. Again, exact years will vary by class.

The actual “programming” is altering factory set values or conditions specific to that chassis, market designation, installed options or country of delivery. The values that can be changed are generally offered on pull down menus from within DAS/Xentry. And even this has become much harder to do in the last few years as MB has gone to a central authorization system for altering operating parameters that requires a connection/password and use of a factory authorized SDS.

This is from Carobd.de website MB Star Diagnosis technical support:MB Star DAS SDS (STAR Diagnostic System) Tips and Tricks

SSD or HDD, which better for Xentry DAS with SD connect C4 ?

Here is the differences between SSD and HDD for SDconnect c4 with Dell D630.

mb-sd-c4-dell-d630

Price:

SD C4 software with SSD for 118 euro, HDD for 99.99 euro

Speed

            SSD VS Common HDD in terms of running speed
(test on our DELL D630 PC)
        4G SSD       4G HDD       1G SSD     1G HDD
boot time about 1min

30 Secs

about 4 min about 3 Min

15 Secs

about 5 Min
shutdown time about 20 Secs about 50 Secs about 22 Secs about 2 min
time to use Xentry

test one vehicle

module

about 2 min

25 Secs

about 3Min

27 Secs

about 4 Min

28 Secs

abou 5 Min

 

This is where SSDs shine. An SSD-equipped PC will boot in seconds, certainly under a minute. A hard drive requires time to speed up to

operating specs, and will continue to be slower than an SSD during normal use.

A PC or Mac with an SSD boots faster, launches apps faster, and has faster overall performance.

Witness the higher PCMark benchmark scores on laptops and desktops with SSDs,

plus the much higher scores and transfer times for external SSDs versus HDDs.

Whether it’s for fun, school, or business, the extra speed may be the difference

between finishing on time or failing.

 

Fragmentation:

Because of their rotary recording surfaces, HDD surfaces work best with larger files

that are laid down in contiguous blocks. That way, the drive head can start

and end its read in one continuous motion. When hard drives start to fill up,

large files can become scattered around the disk platter,

which is otherwise known as fragmentation.

While read/write algorithms have improved to the point that the effect is minimized,

the fact of the matter is that HDDs can become fragmented,

while SSDs don’t care where the data is stored on its chips,

since there’s no physical read head. Thus, SSDs are inherently faster.

 

Availability:

Hard drives are simply more plentiful. Look at the product lists from Western Digital, Toshiba, Seagate, Samsung, and Hitachi, and you’ll see many more HDD models than SSDs. For PCs and Macs, internal HDDs won’t be going away completely, at least for the next couple of years. You’ll also see many more HDD choices than SSDs from different manufacturers for the same capacities. SSD model lines are growing in number, but HDDs are still in the majority for storage devices in PCs.

 

Noise: 

Even the quietest HDD will emit a bit of noise when it is in use from the drive spinning

or the read arm moving back and forth, particularly if it’s in a system

that’s been banged about or in an all  metal system where it’s been shoddily installed.

Faster hard drives will make more noise than slower ones.

SSDs make virtually no noise at all, since they’re non-mechanical.

 

MB SD C4 update to V2016.03

Dear All Customers:

Carobd.de MB SD C4 update to V2016.03,it is the newest software on market,and very stable and usefully!!

mb-sd-c4-star-diagnosis-1-blog

How to activate the MB SD C4? Please click here.

MB SD Connect Compact 4 support reading out & erasing trouble code,reading the real-time data of sensor and actuator, coding and programming. Also support wireless diagnose, support K line,CAN BUS and UDS protocol, with multi-language.

 

MB Star C4 SD Connect Diagnostic Tool Highlights:
1. Multi-languages: English/Bulgarian/Danish/Greek/Spanish/French/Italian/Korean/Polish/Romanuan/Serbo-Croatian/ Turkish/Czech/German/Finish/
Hyngarian/Japanese/Dutch/Portuguese/Russian/Swedish/Chinese
2. Newest Version:  2016.03      Hardware version: OS:2.3   CSD:2.8
3. Update via hard disk, you are offered to buy newest software HDD alone when newer software come out
4. Support both WiFi AND Lan cable connection. more easy to use!No need COM port computer.
5. Supports reading out & erasing trouble code, coding and programming for Mercedes Benz car and truck from 1996-2015.
6. Support both offline and online programming, but you need pay for the SCN Coding service
7. One year warranty, we also offer install service if you buy dell 630 computer from us.
8. There are two software model to choose: Dell D630 HDD, External HDD

Kindly Note

External HDD can not support WIFI function

After activating Xentry, if you can not save the code,pls try to use the following solution.

1. Change the time of your laptop to current time
2. Delete the file lic-key2.dat in Disk C【Patch C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\LicDir】, and pass us the ID to activate again for you.
3. Make sure you pass us the correct HW-ID and APP ID
The Main Unit board display:
mb-sd-connect-compact-4-star-diagnosis-2-blog

 

SD Connect C4 firmware update problems and solution

SD Connect C4 firmware update problems and solution

Question:

I have 5 Sdconnect multiplexers here.

They are all china clones.

Not all from same shop and not all same age(same SN).

I think the 2 which are still working might be the same.

tl;dr flashed multiplexers with toolkit, display doesn’t work anymore, power management pic chip bricked ?

In order to use them with the latest versions of star diagnosis

I needed to update the firmware.

The first 2 multiplexers updated just fine and also work with latest xentry.

But then i tried to update the 3rd one and 4th one.

bootimage and commandserver updated without an error, but then i flashed the power managment firmware. the display went dark and never came back. (the display went dark too when i flashed the first 2, but i came back after a second). the multiplexer is still booting and connecting to the pc. sd toolkit can still access the mux. xentry can still use it. however, xentry shows a voltage of 65 volts when the mux is only connected to 12v. Further diagnostics have not been testet. the toolkit shows all software versions as expected, except power managment is 0.0.0.

I can reflash power management, but without any result.

Is there a way to rescue or repair these 2 multiplexers?

Fix the power management chip somehow.

The fifth mux has some other damage, doesn’t boot. can be used for spare parts maybe.

How to properly update firmware?

You must update only 00, after the update open DAS Standalone, the rest of the updates automaticly install when you open DAS, don’t forget to install batterys!

MB SD Connect C4 firmware update procedure:

http://www.carobd.de/upload/pro/201601/mb-sd-c4-hardware-upgrade-instructions.rar

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Finally! Everything worked again

First of all, i am not talking about CSD 2.9, it is power management 2.8 and 2.9. i could update OS 2.3 and CSD 2.11 just fine.
all of these are included in the sdconnect toolkit.
only when i flahsed power management 2.9 (03_ PmPic29_cpld13), it bricked my power management chip.

i have multiple devices, i took them apart and changed the boards of the multiplexers. there was one board that was able to flash the power management and everything worked again.